This study uses a Marxist perspective to investigate Hong Kong students’ alienation from learning. Alienated learners find learning to be a meaningless, disempowering, and estranging activity. Fifteen Hong Kong undergraduate students were invited to join a photovoice project in which they actively took, shared, and discussed photographs of their experiences with learning. The results suggest that social beliefs about high-stakes examinations legitimize internal contradictions in the education system. This makes students uncritically and unreflectively accept alienated learning. Photovoice projects help the (...) students to become critically aware of their position, self-determination, and agency. (shrink)

Volume 53, Issue 2, February 2021, Page 181-196.

Teachers’ emotions may be affected by structural reforms of education that emphasizes performance-based accountability and by individual psychological processes like thinking style, but there is a lack of research concerning the relationship between the three factors. In this study, thus, we attempted to test the influence of PBA on teacher emotions and to examine whether the relationship was moderated by a zhongyong thinking style in a Chinese context. A sample of 402 primary and secondary schoolteachers from Hubei, Liaoning, and Beijing (...) in China participated in this study. Structural equation modeling was applied to develop moderation models. The results demonstrated that PBA is a singificant factor with respect to teachers’ joy, sadness/frustration, anger, and fear, as related to their job of teaching, but not love of their profession. Moreover, the ZYT style may moderate the relationship between PBA and joy. (shrink)